(the following is quite incomplete and/or not well said and/or not fully thought-out - but has value even though it is something of a personal rant. I kept it in draft for several days... but here it is.... )
SO... IF the United States were to become a "christian" country one can wonder - which christian religion would it become/follow? Would it be the Catholic Church which will reign supreme or one of the Lutherin churches/synods or some Baptist or what?
Of course in the land of religous freedom we could then wonder - what about Jews, Buddists, Muslims, and others?
I like the supremacy of a secular democracy because a secular democracy is able to accept and tolerate all kinds of people and ideas and cultures AND RELIGIONS. A secular democracy is all encompassing and it is not solely centered on any one system and it recognized that there are many systems and ways of doing things and that no one system or way of acting is absolutely the best and most perfect. Secular democracy echues perfectionism and rather appreciates the grays as well as the blacks and the whites and in fact see the infinite rainbow which is the Universe.
I think the world has seen an evolution from the particular and singularly centered to a plurality of diversity. In the beginning of history there is a centricism around first the family and then the clan and then the tribe and then the village and then the country. Some today would have us centered around the planet and in speculative fiction (or science fiction if you like) the "center" is even beyond our planet and solar system!
Along the way of the ever widening centers has come religions. There are Catholic countries and Protestant countries and Muslim countries and a Jewish country and Buddist countries and Hindu countries. And perhaps other types, too.
Our country, the United States of America, as a colonized land was not centered on any one religion (though most were christian and there is large and terrible question of the native religions). Christianity is diverse! There are several types of Catholicism. There are MANY types of Protestant religions. There are many types within the many types. What we see in the Christian religions we also see in the Muslim and the Jewish and the Buddhist, etc, etc....
Diversity and a lack of an ultamite CENTER seems to be rule and the norm. WHY? And we might also ask, why NOT?
With countries centered on any one religion we often see war and domination and oppression and soo much more which is antithetical to peace. Religions almost always seem to want to assert that some one religion (and its ways and means and ????) IS THE FINAL RIGHT/TRUE WAY. This is light (or in spite) of the fact that the discoverer of the final-right-true-way is always some individual and what he or she has discovered by experience is never an experience of the masses. The masses always choose or are made to choose "the new way" but why and why not?
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